I nodded mutely. It seemed like his life was simultaneously heading down two separate tracks: one led him on a cautious, prudent route where he was concerned about his financial security, but the other followed the tenuous path of coaching football at the highest level. Finding success on that track would have been difficult for anyone, and how would he do it when he was losing his eyesight?
I understood his mother’s fears but I also understood that if I pressed, I would lose a friend. And maybe it was selfish (I knew that it was), but I didn’t want to lose him.
“Good golly,” his mom panted as she joined us. “That was a climb!” She looked around. “Look at this view! It’s just like the ocean, isn’t it? I didn’t know a lake could be so fearsome.”
“I didn’t know you were coming up here. I would have helped you,” her son told her.
Everybody needed that at times, and he needed ours. It wasn’t just giving him rides at night or pointing out that someone was waiting for his treadmill at the gym. But how could you force someone to listen to you? I had failed at that with Morgan, Max, and my parents. Now we didn’t even speak, not really, and we certainly didn’t care about each other. Maybe I could work on that…
But I wouldn’t make the same mistakes again with Shane.
Chapter 12
Ilooked around the table. It was a folding one that I’d dug out of the still-packed garage at my former family home, but I had scrubbed it within an inch of its life so all the spiders and dirt were gone. The chairs we occupied were new because Shane and I had decided we needed more places to sit, but we had gone cheap and they weren’t the most comfortable. My guests were already squirming slightly.
I cleared my throat. “Thank you for your attendance. I’ve called you together today so that we can discuss our shared goals of financial independence and security, as well as—”
“Damn, Molly,” my sister interrupted. “Why are you taking like that? Did you go to law school when we weren’t looking?”
I turned on her angrily. “Funny you should mention school! No one noticed that I—”
“Let’s get this going. I can only give you about twenty minutes,” Max broke in.
“Really? What’s so important that you have to run off to?” I demanded, switching topics again.
He mumbled something that my mom caught, and her eyes lit up. “Really, hun? I’m so happy!” she told him.
“What? What did he say?” Morgan asked and Mom turned to her, smiling.
“He and Avonlea are going to meet with a wedding planner!”
That took the wind out of my sails, totally and completely. “Really?” I managed to gasp. Morgan and my mom were asking him all kinds of questions and he gradually warmed up, relinquishing more information until he was fully sharing all the details about the fall wedding his fiancée was planning and where they would honeymoon.
“You’ll need a passport,” I stated, and they seemed to notice me again.
“I think you mean to say ‘congratulations,’” Morgan pointed out and she was correct. I said it.
After a while, I did manage to move the discussion back to the actual reason that I’d asked them to come over to my house. Pared down from the fancy terminology, it was basically this: what were we going to do about money?
Clearly, Max was all set. But he did still have a stake in the situation, which I brought up. “You may not know that Avonlea and I went for coffee a while ago,” I told the table. Then I looked at him, specifically. “She said that you’re interested in taking over the restaurant. Is that true?”
“You met her? What’s she like?” Morgan asked me. I shushed her.
My brother talked for a while, using some fancy terminology of his own. It reminded me a lot of when we’d sat through the pitches for his various businesses, with a lot of beating around the bush but little substance.
Finally, I broke in. “Max, are you saying ‘yes?’ Yes, you want to try to run Walter’s?”
He looked at the battered surface of the card table, silent for a while. “I don’t know if I can do it,” he finally answered me. “You don’t think so.”
“I don’t have a lot of faith,” I admitted. “You haven’t shown any interest in it before. You have shown a lot of stick-to-itivness, either.”
“Molly, that’s not fair…” my mom murmured.
“I never got the chance,” Max snapped. “When I was at the restaurant, you and dad were always telling me that I was doing everything wrong. You acted like a real bitch.”
In response, I didn’t stomp away to write an angry poem, like thirteen-year-old Molly would have done (at the time, I was sure that my work would eventually be considered as masterpieces). Instead, I defended myself. “Dad acted like that with everyone! And I told you how to do things right so I wouldn’t have to go back and fix them myself!” I said furiously. This discussion was going off the rails. Shane and I had talked about it last night and one of the points he had made to me (the main point) was that I needed to stay on-topic and rein in my temper.
It was too late, because now Molly and Max were arguing. Oddly enough, she seemed to be defending me.
